Prior art methods providing insurance for a variety of risks and liabilities often demonstrate the prescript: high benefit limits command high insurance premiums. Consumers often select insurance benefit limits based upon the amount of coverage consumers can afford rather than the amount of coverage consumers require to adequately cover their exposure to particular liabilities and risks. Insurance premiums generally include the benefit expenses incurred by insurance providers and administrative costs to issue insurance coverage. However, a substantial portion of insurance premiums includes the underwriting costs associated with assessing eligibility of consumers, as well as marketing costs to sell insurance to consumers.
Consumers who wish to obtain additional insurance to increase the limits of existing insurance, or to increase the total benefit of insurance, from a new provider would be subject to new and additional underwriting and a new medical evaluation, which is inconvenient to consumers and often causes great concern in consumers with respect to passing another medical evaluation. Consumers who seek additional insurance from their present insurance providers would be required to pay a current market premium. Consumers usually cannot take advantage of the previous underwriting process and, in cases of life insurance, the previous medical evaluation performed to assess their eligibility. Insurance providers generally do not offer additional insurance to their insured parties for reduced premiums, although further underwriting may not be required. Insurance providers may offer additional insurance coverage for reduced premiums only to a highly select base of insured parties who have previously purchased fully-underwritten insurance coverage within a specified period of time. Such offers typically provide only limited coverage based upon the amount of insurance in force and are available for a limited time only.
In addition, insurance providers typically do not rely upon the underwriting of other insurance providers to issue new insurance coverage. For example, insurance providers have offered to convert another insurance provider's term life insurance coverage to whole or permanent life insurance. To avoid anti-selection in such cases, insurance providers require termination of the term life insurance to avoid the total immediate amount of coverage to be increased as a result of such a transaction.
Consumers who wish to obtain additional insurance to increase their benefit limits must undergo new and additional underwriting, a new medical evaluation, and pay current market premiums for additional insurance. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a system and method providing additional insurance which is easily-obtainable and affordable to an insured in order for the insured to increase a total benefit of insurance.